The Blister Buggeration

Well, freakin' humph is all I have to say. Last week, I did little in the way of exercise and somehow landed weighing in at 17st 13.5.

This week, I practically worked my ass off, and despite at some points in the week unofficially weighing in at 17st 11, my Saturday breakfast and a couple of toast meals meant I weighed in this morning officially at 17st 13. Down just a half-pound, having walked a ridiculous amount, biked a reasonable amount, and, it turns out this morning, given myself a bugger of a blister into the bargain, meaning walking's off the agenda for a few days while the damned thing settles down.

So, all in all, I say unto thee, freakin' humph.

Sigh - a new week starts here. I'm not biking tonight, believe it or not, humph or no humph, but I probably will tomorrow. Then every day for the next week, and as soon as the blister buggers off, I'll be back to the walking.

For the first real time this time around, the Disappearing feels like a slog. But on we go.

The Breakfast Hangover

Rassen frassen reakfast rindulgence rangover.

Since my Breakfast Indulgence two days ago, I seem to have slipped back in terms of progress.

Also, it's hot. Also, work. Nehh - wanna take my ball away and go home. One thing I don't want to do is walk anywhere. Another thing I don't want to do is get on that goddamned bike.

Sigh. Ignore me, just having a miseryfest. Feeling hot and flabby in the sunshine, and poor and deprived a week before payday, and covered up with deadlines to the point I don't even particularly want to do a thing.
'Nobody loves me, everybody hates me,
Think I'll go and eat worms' just about sums up today.

Meh.

The Breakfast Indulgence

No sooner do I write a blog entry about how the piecrust pledge is still technically in place than I run out of time and energy to complete the dialy task, dammit - no biking got done by me last night. Curses! And naughty words, to boot.
So that's that dream gone - but there's still time to deliver a properly pleasing result by Tuesday.

Unfortunately, today hasn't helped that either, in all likelihood.  Fewer than 5000 steps walked in a day of mostly-ghostwriting, and a double decker breakfast of yoghurt and compote, followed by sausage baguetter. Gorgeous stuff, courtesy of Cote restaurant in Cardiff, but much guilt-making. I was going to walk the Trail again tonight, but a combination of a plea from d to remember what colour my eyes are and a prodding of a pair of proto-blisters that made me yelp like a whipped mutt convinced me to think a-freakin'-gain. I'm about to pay my penance to the biking gods (Oddly enough, I invented a couple of biking gods just a week or so ago, on a prompt from my mate Sian. they're a set of twins - she has black hair with gold tips. She's called Vroom and she fuels the fire of life. He's called Coaxthethreottle and ensures the road never truly ends. No freaking idea why I decided to tell you this right now. This is essentially just me rambling into the wall rather than getting on the bike).

As I say, the penance must be paid - much Sudoku will be done tonight, dammit, as the pedals must be turned and the calories must be burned.

Am I going into that demented territory of previous Disappearances, where I now feel like whipping myself up and down the street for being a weak-minded bastard? No - still, to this point, the madness appears not to have touched me. I'm a little disappointed in myself, but more than anything else, I'm just determined to keep my focus pushing the numbers in the right direction. So yeah - had a breakfast indulgence. Now about to bike my ass off. And on we go - the road never ends as long as there's fuel in your tank.

The Disappearing Virgin

Hey hey folks, just a flying visit, like boom, here's my news, I'm gonnnne!

There's a trend in the States, where poor demented Christian girls, torn between the demands of older men in their church who tell them their normal sexual urges make them sluts and that they'll burn in Hell forever if they have sex, and the demands of the men their age, who say they're not programmed to wait until marriage, have decided that, in a Clintonian leap of logic about what does and does not constitute sexual relations, decide that anal doesn't 'count,' so they can satisfy the competing demands of all the men in their lives and still come out of it with some mathematical shred of self-respect (at least till they discover feminism and realise it was all appalling sexist bullshit).

That's kind of like me this week. I'm a technical Disappearing Virgin, because I've biked every day so far, as promised in my piecrust pledge, but I'd be lying if I said it had been for a full hour every day, as I also promised. The pledge is alive in spirit, because I've committed each day to the activity, but not in the particularity of fact, because I've broken the specific terms. I did indeed have exercise relations with that bike, but they were not as extensive as they might have been.

I have done correspondingly more walking than I'd thought I'd have done by now though - most days this week I've done at least six miles, and at least one day this week, between the walking (9 miles) and the biking, I ended up tipping the 15 miles of self-propelled travel mark in a single day. So now we wait for the inevitable proto-blisters, and in the meantime, we carry the hell on - I'd done about 3 miles of toing and froing today by the time I decided to head down the trail. The irony being that me stopping and writing all this down has now severely cut into the time I'll be able to spend on the bike tonight. See - Ahem...it's all your fault, really.

Unofficial weigh-ins have been kind so far this week as a result of the imbalance, in my favour, of exercise and calories. The weekend is always inherently trickier, but let's see how things go. Annnnd I'm outta here, hopping on the bike.

In the meantime, in illustration of what was, I admit, an absolutely horrible anal-ogy, I leave you with this comic song from Garfunkel and Oates. Not safe for work. Hell, not safe in any way, shape or form, but both funny as hell (and likely to lead there?) and terribly tragic.

The Pizzanoia Principle

Be calm, ya mad bugger.
Did a walk this morning - not my six-miler, but about a four-miler, which, as I write this, is enough to put me within 300 steps or so of my daily 10,000. Have burned 629 calories. Had 200 calories of porridge for breakfast.

However, come lunchtime, I went with d to the local place, Plas Coffi, which is becoming increasingly lethal around lunchtime. Was thrilled to see it thronged today, but ate my way through a piza there.

The thing about a day like yesterday - a 15-mile, 1500 calorie kind of day - is that it sends you jusssst a little bit insane, because you think "Oh wow - endorphins, man. Need to get me some more of those bad boys. Mmm...maybe I could do another day like that, could I Mugsy, could I, huh? Huh? HUH????!" - at which point you need a swift slap upside the head to bring you down off the ceiling as you think you feel your body fat burning away.

Had a pizza for lunch and now - because I have that sort of imagination - I can visualise the cheese elbowing organs gently to one side as it makes a semi-permanent home on my belly. All this is is a matter of turning the brain through a couple of degrees of the dial, till it goes 'click' and lands in 'Rational' territory. 629 calories is not bad. It's the porridge and the first few mouthfuls of pizza. And I have yet to get on the bike - that delight I'm saving for once I've been up to the local PC World with my poorly sick laptop, which may need cremating, or may be in line for a resurrection. I only hope it doesn't take three days, because that would really rather screw me up right about now.

Should say that since the pizza, I've only had water and a crust of home-made bread and butter (Have you been to my life, by the way? It's kind of like The Waltons), and I'm feeling full as full can be, so I'm not anticipating needing to eat much more tonight. Now if I can just click over from "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned - I did eat the ungodly pizza of deliciousness!" to "Yum. Now, moving on..." I'll be fine.

The Half-Pound Happy Dance

Allllrighty then. Who’s been stealing weight from me when I wasn’t looking?

I mean, thanks and everything, but you should have said something, I’d have baked a ca- Oh. Right. Gotcha.

Yep – the massively surprising weigh-in result this morning stands at: 17st 13.5. I have no real idea how that happened: a couple of days ago and wholly unofficial I was looking at 18st 4.

Coupled with a lovely sunny morning, this is the sort of thing that can make you feel oddly suntanned. Still got the lumpy feeling from yesterday at heart, but hey – focus on the positives, you ungrateful mad fuck.

The strange thing is it inspires me to actually try and keep my piecrust pledge of yesterday. Four walks, minimum, in the next seven days, biking for an hour every day. Let’s take advantage of the flab-thievery and paddle on down, away from the border. Onwards!

Addendum: the sunny day kept up its good work, so once I hit six o'clock, I walked down the Trail and did my six-miler (turns out I'd already done three miles of toing and froing today. Then came home and jumped on the bike An hour of pedalling only bought me about six miles, but it felt good both to hit the piecrust pledge and to clock up over 15 miles of self-powered travel today, meaning that coffees notwithstanding, I'm actually in calorific net deficit for the day - not that one can ignore the coffees of course, but still - a good feeling.

Laptop dying, and out the door again in less than nine hours for another Trail walk. Catch you tomorrow.

The Piecrust Pledge

Bleurgh.

That is pretty much all.

Been walking quite a few days this week, but have still yet to get on a bike. Am about to break that non-habit in the faintly desperate hope of achieving something even vaguely in the same postcode as progress at tomorrow's weigh-in. Not sure, but it feels distinctly unlikely - feel flabby and lumpy and altogether like the whole thing's in failure mode again. Humph.
Hence the bike on-getting. Really speaking, the bike on-getting should be a feature of every day, but deadlines and whatnot simply haven't let it be as important as it should be.

How about this. Whatever the result tomorrow, the next seven days will see me walk at least four times, and bike an hour every day. There you go - that's my piecrust pledge for the day.

Mmmm....piiiiiecrussst...

Then whatever else happens, it retrains the body into expecting a regular chunk of exercise in the day.

Good. That's that sorted then. Will now jump on the bike feeling vindicated and as though I have both some earthly clue what I'm doing, and a dedicated plan for its achievement, rather than just feeling like a lumpy old fuck.

(Shrugs) Hey, sometimes you've got to lie to yourself, just to shift your point of view. 

The Double Pizza Day

Argh.
Something needs to be damn well done!

There's a new place open in my town, called Plas Coffi, that not only does the whole de-caff latte, free wi-fi, comfortable hermitage thing, but also has a wood-fired pizza oven. Lunched there yesterday. Had pizza. Then d got out of work - she's never experienced the food at the place yesterday, so ended up going there for dinner too.

Two pizzas, one day. Delicious as all get-out, but disastrous from a Disappearing point of view. Must have discipline, dammit. Did an unofficial weigh-in this morning (yeah, sue me!), and the effect of the Double Pizza Day was immediately apparent. Humph - wood-fired goodness vs Disappearing discipline...

Wait, just gimme a minute...

Arrrgh!

16th June - The Normality Setback

Hello out there! I know, I know, you haven’t heard from me in weeks now. Well here I am, normal service resumed and all that.

Last Tuesday’s early-ass, pre-bathroom, pre-schlepp-to-London-to-hear-about-brains weigh-in was a fairly impressive disappointment. 18st 2.

Today’s early-ass, pre-bathroom, pre-Starbucks-to-work-my-moobs-off was even worse – 18st 2.5.

Why has this happened? Oh, that’ll be staggeringly simple – buggerall in the way of proper exercise for about two weeks, and an approach to food that hasn’t seen me be exactly profligate, but which hasn’t seen me be especially sensible either. So that’s the equation we’re dealing with. Let e= 0. Let f= >wisdom. e+f= fatbastardy+4lbs.

However, this is all fairly incidental. Just a couple of days ago, I started walking again in the morning before work, and biking again in the evening. The biking needs to increase, and so, if I’m honest, does the walking. I also need to find time from somewhere to throw some sort of gym-based element in there. Do I like being back in the 18 zone? No of course not – what kind of Muppet do you take me for? Will I get back into the 17s pretty damned sharpish? Yes, I will. This increase is a setback, but a logical one induced by the presence of too much normality over a relatively short period of time. This sort of setback happens on a Disappearing journey, and I know that. The challenge is to not go “Oh, it’s all gone to cock!” and dive into a cream cake, but to square your shoulders, rub your hands and say “Right, ya bass, I’m havin’ ya!” and get the hell back on with it.

Oh and no, I’m not too much of an ethical person – I’m happy to lay some of the initial blame for the Normality Setback on a couple of mad buggering deadlines that had to be hit. They’re done now. There are still mad buggering deadlines, (there always seem to be mad buggering deadlines), but none as mad or buggering as the ones of the last couple of weeks, so, all together now – “Right, ya bass, I’m havin’ ya!” – and up at 6.30 tomorrow morning again for more walking.

The Fuck-Nothing Knowledge

I've made many a vow in this process, even so far since the re-launch. One of the most recent was not to weigh myself except on official weigh-in days.
You know the result of that? It's that I know precisely fuck-nothing about what tomorrow's result will be.

Am I anticipating greatness? Fuck, no. The plans I had came to practically nothing this week - I dis some walking, but one thing I'm sadly learning is that the orange Disappearing Shoes might look cool as all-get-out (Disclaimer - they probably don't, but I think they do), but hey damn well cripple me when I try to walk proper long distances in them. Six miles sees me cringing in pain and practically unable to move for the rest of the day. So clearly, there's some rethinking needed there.

Consistency of exercise? Notsomuch. Consistency of calorific regulation? Notsomuch. Not exactly stupid, either, but the absence of any kind of weighing vigilance appears to have loosened my strings a little too far this week. So I have no idea what the Nazi Scales will show in the morning. Do I think they'll probably show me back in the 18s? Hell yes, without much of a shadow of doubt. How far do I think I'll be in there? I don't know, I have precisely fuck-none in the way of insider information to vaguely hint to you.

Do I have much time to fret about it? Not really - am off to London in the morning for a two-day trip, including a fabulously interesting conference on Wednesday, on how the brain works. Just call me the Disappearing Riddler, bwahahaha...
It behooves me of course to look the fuck after myself on this trip, and not be a complete and utter dickwad when faced with the temptations of what is for me now an extended stay in the twinkly-lit capital.

Here's a fun fact, that probably nobody knows. Last time I went to London for an overnight, as far as I recall, was the time my phone got nicked at Hammersmith tube station. Along with every card I owned, and my train ticket home. And do we know why I was going to Hammersmith station? Don't think anyone currently reading the blog has the pedigree or the endurance to remember this, but I was trying to get to a stall that was responsible for a lot of my early big regains of weight - a stall that used to exist at Paddington station, so I could gorge every time I went there, on chocolate coated nuts and yoghurt covered fruit and suchlike wonders. They scaled the company back, so now Hammersmith is one of the only locations in the city. And I was going there, as well as to Hammersmith Starbucks, when I was left bereft of every method of currency I owned. I was going there to gorge on all that stuff.

This will so not be happening this time around. At least, not for that reason.
What does the morning bring? Let's see. I really do have more time this week to devote to the Disappearing than I had last week...honest. There will be focus, and dedication, and discipline...and bloomin' walking boots!

The Gasman’s Gift

I’ve said this before, but I have no explanation for what happened this morning.

I was doing such a good job of being all gung-ho and positive and moving-right-the-hell-along yesterday, with my head full of Hendrix and the like. Didn’t stop me weighing last night though. Now bear in mind that throughout the course of this week, every time I’ve weighed, I’ve been heavy – two pounds, three pounds, four pounds more than what I weighed in at last week –which was 18st 1, for my fellow sufferers from early-onset what-the-fuck, or indeed those who have too much going on in their life to actually give a toss. 

There have been solid – and I do mean solid – reasons for all this. A couple of bread heavy days (I developed a demented craving for beans on toast round about Thursday last), several days including big meals, including pasta and creamy sauces. Just two days ago, I had a three-course Mexican extravaganza, including, on the principle of the Aristotelian fuck-you, a vanilla and macadamia cheesecake with dulce de leche. Yesterday, likewise, a chunky pie and mash lunch with sweet potato fries. What’s probably more, my exercise quotient has been erratic at best, deadlines, panic and accursedly vile May weather conspiring to keep me from walking all but once, and then not for my full six miles, and busyness doing its best to keep me off the exercise bike. Must Do Better is pretty much stamped across the forehead of this week. When I went to bed last night, resigned and listening to Hendrix, I tipped the scale at a hefty 18st 5lbs. Figuring I’d evaporate and pee about two pounds during the course of the night, I was gearing myself to be content with a 2lb backslide, given the week I’ve had.

So when I woke up this morning, peed, and got on the Nazi Scales*, I was gobsmacked to see that somewhere in the night, I’d lost 4.25lbs. 18st 0.75 was my first weigh-in this morning – a whole unlikely quarter-pounder of actual, measurable loss against practically every odd you care to name.

Did a bit of a chuckling happy dance at that, to be fair.

“See?” said d. “You have got to stop with the daily weighing shit, honey, you’re gonna drive yourself insane.” She kindly left off the rejoinder “and me with you!” though we’ve been married for ten and a half years, she didn’t particularly need to say it.

I phoned British Gas.

Not to let them know about my miraculous quarter-pound, you understand – I mean, I’m mad, but I’m not quite that random. The point was I actually managed to jump on the exercise bike last night for the space of a whopping 200 calories, and then jumped in the shower. Then I squealed like a bitchslapped six year-old and jumped right the hell back out again. We were away one night, and our boiler appears to have taken the opportunity to give up the ghost of its pilot light and basically piss itself all over our microwave. (Don’t get me started, I’m not entertaining the notion that our white goods indulge in kinky sex games every time our backs are turned). The upshot being we had no hot water, hence my early morning call to British Gas, or as I think of them colloquially, Thieves, Robbers and Bastards Incorporated. They’d get an engineer to come and waggle a spanner at the boiler like a gas-powered Harry Potter tomorrow morning, they said. T’riffic – kettle-based basin baths for us in the meantime, it’s like being in the war. Or the 70s, come to that. But that did mean I was free to sod off to my Starbucks to get on with all the miscellaneous work the universe appears to demand of me in return for money – the irony being of course I spend most of the money in the Starbucks I go to in order to do the work, but let’s not go there.

I felt the need to take an official Second Morning Pee before getting on the train (yes, an official one – if you don’t believe I categorise it like that, you know too few blokes). That went on rather longer than I’d expected.

You know how my brain works. You can probably see the look crossing my face, can’t you.

“Blimey,” I said, out loud, which is the peril of working from home. “That was a long pee… I wonder how much that weighed.”

Oh yes I did!

I got back on the Nazi Scales, and hear me, o ye scoffers of my neurosis. 17st 13.25. An altogether pretty critical pound and a half of loss – in one additional morning pee, thankyouverymuch.

And yes, I’m taking this one as Official – so today’s official weigh-in figure in under the 18st barrier – 17st 13.25 is now, against all the odds, me.

The temptation of course is to say “Hey, I had a great relaxed week and I still lost weight, I’m untouchable”. This will not be happening. I’m on a tight deadline till Friday. After that, just four relatively easy, looser ones. There will be walking. There will be biking. There will be an increased calorific attention to goddamned detail. 

And for those of you who think the Second Pee Rule is cheating, consider this – Disappearing is an enterprise almost entirely governed by will, and will in turn can be governed by mood. Having seen a 17 and treating it as official, my will to push on down towards 17st 7lbs is re-invigorated and strong and engine-revving for this Disappearing Man. Taking a quarter-pound loss would have been fine, but it would have left me for a whole other week on the ‘wrong’ side of my Disappearing Rubicon, the 18 stone barrier, feeling like the damned thing was comparatively uncrackable.

So yeah – I’m taking the 17. And next week, I aim to be more convincingly down in the 17s, trying to get beneath the 17st 7 half-barrier. Watch this Disappearing Space.

The Hendrix Perspective

Here's the deal.
This week has been a Disappearing disaster. Sorry to spoil the headline of tomorrow for you, but there it is. Even halfway through the week, after a couple of bread-heavy days and a lack of what, for the sake of any remaining delicate sensibilities in any of my readers, I'll call bathroom productivity, I'd put on three pounds in not one, but a series of unofficial weigh-ins. And that was before a kind of radically unscheduled mini-break which saw me eat quite a large Mexican meal yesterday, including a dessert. I haven't been anywhere near the Nazis since I've been home, because frankly I'm a little scared they're going to tell me something I already half-know. That's a crisis I'll confront tomorrow. For now I feel blobbish and self-defeating.

But the other half of the deal is far more positive. I've been listening to a lot of good music lately.
Yeah, I know, bit of a non-sequitur, but stick with me.

Most of you know I'm deaf in one ear. I still miss the function of that poor little bugger every single day. But when you hear a lot of good music - when you play the opening of Hendrix's Foxey Lady straight into your brain, or the opening of Clapton's Layla, or the opening of Guns 'N' Roses' Sweet Child O'Mine. When you hear Stevie Wonder sing Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours, or Blondie's One Way Or Another, or Marvin Gaye singing practically any damn thing whatsoever, or BB King, or Ella, or Billie, or Otis - or whatever music lifts your mood and makes you sure the world is worth waking up in one more day - a special thing happens when you have only one working ear. At least it does to me. There's every potential, when faced with a world history of great music and only one working ear to go "Fuck fuck fuck, I have only one working ear, and that spoils the music for me, dammit!" But if you've got the sense you were born with, I think you say "How cool! I can still hear all this kickass, life-affirming stuff through one ear."

I know, I know - it's an annoyingly chipper, Boy Scouty kind of attitude, and there'll be plenty of  world-hating whinging along in just a little while, probably, but for now, I'm applying the one-eared Hendrix Perspective to practically everything. Can't do what I want right now? So what, I'll likely be alive a year from now, let's work towards the goal. Not a massively successful world-conquering writer yet? Need to finish something, dude, get the hell on with it, or no-one can tell you how cool you are. Going to have a dispiriting weigh-in tomorrow? Yeah, I know, but there's next week to knuckle down with the walking and the biking and the discipline to apply.

So tomorrow will bring what it'll bring, but for now, the Hendrix Perspective is keeping me from beating my man-breast and disappearing into a cyclone of self-loathing and self-recrimination. Now - to the bike!